Team
Spirits
Location
Life at On
What we Offer
Application Process
Apply(opens in a new tab)

Back to jobs

Senior Lead - Sustainability, Footwear Creation

Location: Zurich

Apply for this role(opens in a new tab)

In short

At On, innovation, performance, and sustainability go hand in hand and it’s in the creation process where big ideas meet real-world impact. As Senior Lead, Sustainability - Footwear Creation, you’ll turn sustainability vision into scalable reality. Working at the intersection of Footwear Development, Engineering, Materials, and Testing, you’ll ensure every product decision moves us closer to a lower-impact, higher-quality future. You’ll act as the change leader and trusted advisor for sustainable creation, providing the structure, expertise, and insight that enable teams to make the right decisions at the right time, while partnering closely with our Sustainability Design, Strategy and Innovation Management leaders to connect concept, creation, and scale, shaping how sustainability lives across On’s entire footwear ecosystem.

Your Mission

  1. Translate sustainability from concept to scale
  • Guide how sustainability ambition turns into daily creation reality, from early design through development and scale-up, ensuring every step reduces impact and enhances product quality.
  • Define and implement the frameworks, tools, and metrics that help the Footwear Creation teams embed sustainability within Development, Engineering, Materials, and Testing.
  • Act as a thought partner and consultant, helping teams interpret data, deconstruct LCAs, and make informed material, process, construction and product decisions.
  • Provide clarity, structure, and alignment across functions, ensuring sustainability principles are applied consistently throughout the creation process.
  • Anticipate dependencies and translate complex goals into practical roadmaps that balance innovation, performance, cost, and manufacturability.
  • Communicate progress through clear storytelling and insight, connecting data to meaningful impact across products and teams.
  1. Drive sustainable creation and material integration
  • Lead the scale-up of key initiatives such as dope dye and low impact dyeing solutions across core footwear franchises, ensuring alignment across Development, Engineering, Materials, and Sourcing.
  • Integrate sustainability into creation workflows, from material & compound selection and component engineering to prototyping and testing.
  • Partner with Sourcing as the bridge for transfer and scaling, building supplier readiness and enabling successful transfer at commercialisation level.
  • Collaborate with Testing to validate durability, quality, and product lifespan, ensuring sustainability choices support performance and longevity.
  • Partner with Materials Leadership to evolve the footwear material toolbox, accelerating adoption of preferred and low-impact materials while maintaining On’s premium aesthetic, performance and quality standards.
  • Track and report on creation-centric KPIs: material integration and consolidation rates, material waste reduction, digital vs physical sample creation, readiness milestones, process improvements - contributing to On’s Impact Progress Report.
  1. Enable teams and lead change
  • Serve as a change catalyst, helping teams embrace sustainability as a driver of innovation and quality.
  • Deliver training, tools, and frameworks that empower creation teams to make sustainability-led decisions with confidence.
  • Offer expert guidance and coaching on LCA interpretation, material trade-offs, and sustainable decision-making.
  • Foster collaboration between Zurich Lab and VN creation hubs, ensuring consistent adoption of sustainability practices and learnings.
  • Influence leaders and peers to embed sustainability into planning, ways of working, and success metrics across Product Creation.
Two women in athletic clothing sit on a bench with takeaway coffee cups, smiling and chatting after a workout.

    Your story

    • 8+ years of progressive experience within the apparel or footwear industry with similar industrial production challenges
    • Educational background in material or environmental science
    • You are first and foremost an operator - someone who thrives on setting targets, hitting deadlines, and turning complex strategy into structured execution.
    • With a background in footwear product creation and experience working within a production or factory environment, you understand the full journey from concept to manufacturable product.
    • You’re motivated by solving practical challenges, aligning people, processes, and priorities to deliver measurable progress. You balance sustainability with performance, aesthetics, quality, cost, scale, and manufacturability, knowing that true innovation lives in the balance of these elements.
    • You bring a project-management mindset, able to turn ambition into roadmaps and roadmaps into results. You thrive in fast-moving, cross-functional environments where precision and accountability matter.
    • You are a trusted partner and change enabler, able to simplify complexity, guide teams with clarity, and use data and storytelling to drive confidence in decision-making. You may not have held a formal sustainability title, but you deeply understand sustainable creation practices and their potential to shape better products and processes.
    • You combine visionary ambition with operational discipline and a passion for getting things done, turning ideas into tangible outcomes that redefine how sustainable footwear is made at scale.
    Two women in activewear run outdoors, smiling, surrounded by greenery and other runners.

    About the Team

    We are a small team with big responsibilities. In our Footwear Materials team, we implement and execute the sustainability strategy for the entire company through our footwear materials where we help shape the future of the organization. We conduct research, create strategies, implement projects, and innovate products and processes through the lens of sustainable materials and footwear. One of the main objectives of the team is to drive strategic material sustainability priorities into reality in collaboration with other departments across the company, with a focus on consistent and effective communication and education around these topics. As the Senior Lead, you will also have the important task of leading and influencing the current team and fostering effective collaboration across our global footwear creation team.

    See more
    Four people work on laptops around a high table in a glass meeting room, while another person walks by outside holding a drink.
    A man in a black t-shirt with his hair tied up is standing and smiling

    Ernest

    Footwear Development, Ho Chi Minh City

    Unlike other brands, we aren't just executioners out here in Vietnam, we give ideas as well. Sometimes they have a new idea in Zurich and we might find a process to make it more efficient and we share that.
    Group of people sit and talk at curved concrete benches on a rooftop garden with a city skyline in the background.

    What we offer

    On is a place that is centered around growth and progress. We offer an environment designed to give people the tools to develop holistically – to stay active, to learn, explore and innovate. Our distinctive approach combines a supportive, team-oriented atmosphere, with access to personal self-care for both physical and mental well-being, so each person is led by purpose.

    On is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to creating a work environment that is fair and inclusive, where all decisions related to recruitment, advancement, and retention are free of discrimination.

    Build the better you

    What to expect

    We want to set everyone up for success, so here’s the lowdown on how we hire. Our process is a two-way street – bringing you into our culture, while helping us learn how you think.

    Our full process can last about eight weeks from application to offer, because we care about getting it right. These steps explain how we usually do things.

    Before you get started, feel free to consider if you want to work with us. Strange question? Well, we give people a lot of space to navigate their day-to-day and that style isn't for everyone. We want you to be passionate about what you do and be sure this is the right fit. Because when skills and passion combine – it creates that 'Wow' moment.